


All My Life, Where You Bean?

by Nny



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, BAMF Clint Barton, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21515125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: "You get to save the day when you can stand on your own," Clint said, which was probably a fair point. Bucky reluctantly disentangled his hand from the back of Clint's head; he just about managed to bend himself in half, heave himself onto his elbows and pull out a gun. He brandished it at Clint, who looked distinctly unimpressed."I can take out more guys like this than you can," he said, shrugging as much as his position would allow, and Clint cocked his head to one side."Wouldn't bet on it," he said.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 54
Kudos: 341





	All My Life, Where You Bean?

Bucky opened his eyes to some kind of nightmare, one of those paintings by people who thought too long about god and then tried to imagine the opposite. Winged things were pouring out of a violently purple rip in the sky, lightning chasing them down, and something down here at street level was making the ground shake. He tried to roll onto his side but nothing was responding the way that it should, and the pain was trying to swallow him back down into blackness again. 

"Hey," a voice said, and then there was a pair of faintly familiar blue eyes trying to remind the sky what it ought to look like, in a face creased with worry and marked with dirt. "Hey, bro, I don't think you should be moving." 

"You got - any better ideas?" Bucky's voice sounded like it was coming from a little way off, and he didn't blame it - he didn't want to be in his body right now either. His blinking seemed to last longer than it should, like his consciousness was looking to escape, and he quit trying to move for a second and just stared upwards, Iron Man painting the purple sky bruise-blue above him. 

"Gimme a second." The guy's face didn't join his voice this time, and Bucky couldn't help thinking that it was kind of a shame; he still couldn't place him, but he knew somehow that when he'd seen the guy before he'd _noticed_. 

Something in the sky shrieked, ancient and terrifying, a sound that echoed out of your nightmares and grabbed hold at the base of your spine. It was cut across by the weirdly pedestrian sound of a truck's engine turning over, warming up. Bucky just about rolled over onto his side, this time - score one for supersoldier healing - and watched as one of the omnipresent foodtrucks chugged across the street and drew up next to him. 

On reflection, it looked kind of familiar. It woulda been hard to miss a colour scheme like that; the truck was painted a deep purple and covered with what looked like targets, overlapping concentric circles in different shades. _Bean Travellin'_ was painted across the side in white, a coffee bean dotting the i. It was an impossibility of normality in the hellscape he'd woken up in, the kind of thing that showed up in your nightmares and reminded you that it was all a dream. 

Bucky was okay with his dreams looking like this. The guy's shirt matched the truck and the sky, and his jeans were faded blue and tighter than was decent; his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and above that clung beautifully to the muscles underneath. He hopped out of the truck and jogged around to the back, pulling open the doors there and fussing with straps for a minute before pulling out a trolley that he clattered to the ground by Bucky's side. 

"The hell are you doing?" Bucky asked, genuinely bemused, and the guy - Clint, his badge said, and COFFEE OVERLORD in tiny letters underneath - shrugged. 

"Getting you out of here," he said, "'cos the paramedics sure as hell ain't coming until the flying monkeys are done." 

Overhead there was a rattling boom that shivered all the glass in the windows around. Things were crashing around them, and Bucky had all of a second to feel the stinging of concrete on the side of his face before he was covered and surrounded by a warmth of purple that smelled like coffee and fresh sweat. 

"Hey," he said, and batted weakly at the guy's side, which was layered with the kind of muscle that honestly wasn't usual outside of Bucky's immediate social circle; when you hung out at Stark's tower your normal got a little skewed. "Hey, _I'm_ supposed to be the superhero, here." 

"And you're doing a great job," Clint said reassuringly, which hadn't exactly been Bucky's point. He groaned and rolled onto his back again, lifted his metal hand to cradle the back of Clint's head where Clint was hunched over him, concrete and glass and who knew what else spangling off the metal. Clint - who had hair like a haystack, and a smile like sunshine - snorted softly. "Well this is just all kinds of intimate." 

Bucky tried on a smile of his own, because he could be smooth as hell when he wanted to be, even if he still couldn't move his legs. It was deeply satisfying, the way Clint's eyes dropped to his mouth. 

"I can do intimate," Bucky said, over a background of repulsor whines and shield clangs and the crackle of the Widow's bites. "But right now I gotta go save the day." 

"You get to save the day when you can stand on your own," Clint said, which was probably a fair point. Bucky reluctantly disentangled his hand from the back of Clint's head; he just about managed to bend himself in half, heave himself onto his elbows and pull out a gun. He brandished it at Clint, who looked distinctly unimpressed. 

"I can take out more guys like this than you can," he said, shrugging as much as his position would allow, and Clint cocked his head to one side. 

"Wouldn't bet on it," he said. 

It wasn't exactly dignified, being hauled onto a rickety camping trolley like you were a sack of coffee beans. Bucky shrugged Clint off and pushed up against the overwhelming weight of gravity, managing to stagger to his feet after a brief and embarrassing sojourn on his knees. Couldn't quite lift his head, maybe, but he was in a better position than he had been, even if he had to hold onto the door of the truck to stay anything like upright. 

"Look, they're winning," Clint said, exasperation riding heavy on his voice, "would you sit the hell down?" 

"No," Bucky said, gritted teeth and steel jaw, the tension of sheer determination in his body the only thing holding him up. He took a couple steps that held the distinct flavour of a check that his body couldn't cash; Clint's arm, suddenly around his waist, was the only thing that stopped him from crashing back down to the broken ground. "Gotta make sure they're - all gone." 

"Goddamn stubborn asshole," Clint said, and sat Bucky down on the step that led into the back of his truck, reaching past him to grab something that was leaning against one of the walls in there. Bucky watched through a field of vision that was sparkling into darkness at the edges as Clint pulled a work of art out of a case, a sculpture in carbon fibre and string. 

"The hell," he said, faintly. Clint turned his head and grinned at Bucky over his shoulder, looking more like a superhero in that moment than Tony - for one - had ever managed. The tight purple shirt outlined the width of his shoulders beautifully, and the quiver he shrugged across his back, combined with the bow - he was like something out of a story book. Some kind of fairytale prince. The kind of thing you dreamed. 

"You're lucky I was booked onto the range tonight," Clint said, then drew and fired without looking, before Bucky could even warn him about the creature drawing close. 

It was possibly the hottest thing that Bucky had ever seen. 

"Clint -" he said. 

"You're okay," Clint said, turned to sight and pick off another one, far further away than Bucky would ever have bet on a bow. "I've got your back." 

It oughtn't to've been that reassuring. But - even as the darkness spread out from the edges of his vision, and gravity increased its pull - Bucky found himself feeling something like safe. 

*

He woke to violent purple, flinched backwards automatically and hissed through his teeth at the pain in his back and his neck and his head. There was a moment's dissonance, a moment's panic, but it was cut through with the reassurance, the impossible normality, of the warm smell of coffee drifting down to where he lay on the truck's floor. There was a sack of coffee beans tucked behind his head and a hoodie draped over him, and a pair of purple sneakers were shuffling across the metal floor. 

"Hey," Clint said, crouching down beside him and setting down a mug. "The paramedics are gonna be here just as soon as Captain America can clear them a path through. You doing okay?" 

"We won?" 

Clint grinned, wide and beautiful. "With a little help from yours truly, yeah. The Avengers kicked ass." He helped Bucky sit up a little better, propping him against the truck's wall, then handed him over a mug that smelled like everything heaven was made of. "It's okay," Clint said, smiling with an edge of something a little self-deprecating, "I know you're thinking it, you can tell me I'm your hero." 

Bucky met his eyes, and Clint's feigned confidence faded into confusion at the expression on his face. 

"Honestly," Bucky said, meaning it right down to the bones of him, "you're like somethin' out of a dream."


End file.
